


Evolution

by ColdNeon



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dystopian society, Genocide, Human-Troll shared planet, Multi, Ship Sinking, Violence, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:53:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColdNeon/pseuds/ColdNeon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Evolution is critical for a species to survive. A species must move forwards in order to keep it safe from new threats.</p>
<p>If a species becomes stuck, (evolutionstuck, if you will), it is in danger of extinction.</p>
<p>It may not even be the evolution of the species physically that is required, rather its social evolution.</p>
<p>Humans and trolls. Two species with a hatred for each other instilled at birth. Constantly feuding over land, resources and their continued existence.</p>
<p>12 trolls raised in a cruel society which trains them to be the strongest generation, worthy of fighting the human plague.</p>
<p>8 humans who have been terrified from birth by stories of fanged creatures which will rip their skin clean off and will murder their families and friends without a blink.</p>
<p>The hope for a generation. The survival of not one, but two species.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Holy shit, this is just gonna be nerve racking. 
> 
> Welcome to my first fic, I encourage you to give me all the feedback you can on this pile of rubbish, please and thank you. 
> 
> Do excuse the pretentious summary.

Alright, so we should do this from the start. And by the start, I mean the start, all the way back to basics, back to the shit that made the crowd go apeshit. Every single part of this story is important, you see? Not just mine, but the two other guys as well. All three of the tales form one coherent unit that essentially and universally changed the path of two species, whilst leaving no doubt that sentience is one hell of a fucked up thing. 

My name is Dave Strider. I’m 18 years old, and a human, born from a random girl my dad met in one of the neighbourhoods. She never even stayed around long enough to name me, just rocked up and handed me to him and said adios, disappearing into the evening air, never to be seen or heard from again. Not that that is all that uncommon here in this hellhole we call the United Populace. Well, if you want to be correct and all that jazz, it’s the United Populace of the Human Society, an organisation of governments that aims to keep the human population stable and survive the foe. Every single facet of our education is a focus on becoming the gears in the society that forces us forwards and ultimately determines the survival of the human race. When the Americas were invaded, an early form of the UP was formed, to try and save the native populations. About two tenths of the population was saved, which considering the circumstances wasn’t half bad.

Emphasis on half. 

It was only downhill from there, half of Eurasia was walled up and blocked off, militarised and armed up to the teeth in an attempt to eradicate any chance of the foe entering our nation. The rest of the Asian nations burnt, in a perpetual standstill conflict which only hurt the innocent. The line in the sand was drawn in India, the first wall being built there. Those who didn’t retreat were abandoned, in yet another ploy to placate our enemy. Again, another massive amount of casualties to strike fear and cut ourselves off from our own ideas, truly and deeply into all our hearts. So, the remaining humans formed large scale colonies in Africa, Europe, excluding the Mediterranean. Those there, with their (relaxed, too easy) natural attitudes. Students are taught that people living there are in poverty, dehumanised and slaves to the foes, their only foothold in Europe. 

Another lie. 

I was raised in one of the English districts, so things weren’t so in your face. Once the bridges between France and England had been built in the late 20th century, the pressing issues of food availability had dropped a little and some different cultures had finally emerged. Still, the government was quick to crack down on anyone who so much as breathed a word of freedom and free will. Schools everywhere taught children that thinking about things was a bad idea and you should just do your job without thinking a damn thing about it, no matter how bad things were. What’s worse is that that happened even before those bridges started, and we were left with a generation of adults who didn’t even think their actions through, just did ‘em to the damned letter.

I was fortunate in that regard. My bro, well, dad, but I call him Bro, taught me from the get-go that yeah, everything that came out of teacher’s mouth was a crock of shit and that the best things to learn were going to be from his hands. He started from birth, making me crawl through hoops before I could even walk. That was just a simple precursor, because after that, everything went into overdrive. Sword handling, some gun handling, though he told me from the get-go that that was utter bullshit. The training was hard, intensive martial arts in the morning before school, world history (the uncensored version. In all honesty, no idea how he got his filthy gloved hands on those books. Mysterious, enigmatic bastard) and then more exercise to build up my personal capacity. It was just an ever-loving, clusterfuck of continuous work and exercise, not to mention puppet ass. 

In addition to being a mysterious guy, my brother also helped run some of the less-than-legal fetish markets in England. If caught, he’d be publicly flogged, repeatedly, then thrown in a gutter and spat on by the rest of the populace. So, every day we revised and kept everything under wraps. I did my best to keep my feelings about his activities unknown but around the time I turned thirteen, he began to make more efforts to keep it out of my vision, make it more effective, less chance of it being discovered.  
Me? I had my own artistic endeavours from a young age. It was only at 13 that I started to let them flow. I used the underground relays to spread my art pieces, Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, the fuckin’ sweetest art to ever grace this planet. I laid some subtle political influences into it and let the world know my opinions on things. Anonymously of course, not like I was gonna go and spoil my anonymity just for the sake of a political opinion. Martyrdom has never really been my idea of the best way to conduct yourself. 

So, the two of us spent a good 5 years expanding as much as we could without tipping off the authorities to our identities. Course, a few innocent people got arrested, subsequently (and publicly) excecuted for being suspects, and it cut the both of us deep. Bro was hurt even more than I was. It was like he took those deaths on and funnelled himself into his works in a more aggressive manner than he ever had before. He drank more vodka, and increased the intensity of our training. We came out of it with more gashes that needed to be stitched, more bruises that needed to be covered, more blood that needed to be mopped up and a total disregard for health. The amount of bullshit excuses I had to spin at school day to day were ridiculous. Commonly I just liked to stick to the oft-accepted “My dad was keepin’ me in line.” Course, the school accepted that more readily because it was such a common thing these days anyway. Families were more violent than they used to be before the mass re-education, employing so-called traditional values to reinforce the family and make them more obedient and open to the government messages we were expected to ingest at breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

I know this narration is needlessly long, but I feel like I really need you to immerse you in just how fucked my situation is. Even from the young age of six, I nearly was caught out by the school when I blurted out how fucked up it was that we were told not to think for ourselves. This resulted in my teacher bashing me with a cane and telling me that the next time he heard me say anything like that that he’d call the police in. The sudden realisation that Bro had been teaching me the wrong thing made me violently explode, leading to my accusation of him corrupting me. So, he sat me down and told me about his friends who had lost their lives and minds because of what the government had done to them. 

So, life went on. I grew up, became more martially adept, and became more in control of my emotions and now presented and ever monotonous façade. The ever-present threat of being discovered by the government led to the shades which shielded both of our eyes, under the guise of being prescription shades for sensitive eyes. Bro always insisted on this odd design that he said was from some East-Asian animation, pioneered by the Japanese. Of course, rumours had it that the country was enslaved by the foe, but no-one really knew. 

There were rumours that a new offensive is on its way, but that’s probably just another line of government propaganda to prevent even the slightest flicker of rebellion or insurgency amongst those in the populace who haven’t quite laid down and let themselves get kicked in the arse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh fuck shitty cliffhangers
> 
> whoops.
> 
> i might be adding to this in the next day or two. 
> 
> thank you for reading


	2. Living From Out Of Your Pocket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More world-building, more house, more shenanigans.

It all spiralled around the first few days after my 18th birthday. It was December and everything was becoming extravagant as the government threw a far reaching celebration regarding yet another year of surviving the foe. As usual, the celebration of the solstice (Something that everyone kinda celebrates) just goes off, because the government actually contributes to the populace for a total of once that year. Even then, they use it as a time to root out anyone who has contraband. It’s not unusual to see a few people in a district block being dragged away from their loved ones because they rustled up an old box of their great grandfather’s fireworks. It always made me smile a tiny bit when I was younger when I saw people getting arrested for having a contraband sword or computer when our apartment was loaded with the shit. We didn’t even keep food in any of our cupboards, just weaponry or technology that we scavenged. 

At school, I made every attempt to steal pieces of computers or supplies. I didn’t really have a reason to, it just helped the idea that if I ever found a particular piece that Bro might be able to upgrade some of our computers. We used chat clients to try and keep in contact, and over time the network grew with the help of some anonymous hacker, who oddly seemed to be permanently inebriated. And so, soon there was a few teenagers around my age, and a few older ones. I mainly talked to the teenagers from our state, the other older young adults seemed more distant whenever I tried to talk to them. I just blew it off as arrogance on their part and continued talking to the others in my client, mainly ectoBiologist, a chatty little guy, who was obsessed with movies and one particularly annoying actor, Nic Cage. The bullshit that the two of us would spit would span hours and hours of time and many a night that went on far, far into the night. After a while I started speaking to this girl gardenGnostic, and her bubbly nature managed to bring a gradual smile to my face for what felt like the first time in years, even when I shut that smile down and pretended it never happened. The final of our little foursome was a cold and distant girl whose handle was the always unsettling tentacleTherapist. 

Her habit of getting into my head never ceased to creep me out, not that I’d admit that to her. 

My friendships with them became as close as you could get when using an illegally maintained network whilst talking to someone who could potentially be a secret police officer. Of course I trusted that Bro would never let that happen but on occasion when TT was too invasive, I would just twinge a little and my instinct to grab my shit and run as fast as I could would rise exponentially. I was a bit like the crows that were outside our window most days, the ones I would occasionally feed with some of the contraband bread that we’d get in small amounts. While it was really a waste, it was worth it to see how cool the birds’ wing movements were as they flew into the window sill. Staring and daydreaming took up a lot of my time when I wasn’t drawing or working out another way to get some parts for computers, or some extra food. Then one fateful day when I went to the school, everything changed.

~*~

It was just an dull, ordinary day at school, I kept my head down and looked through the library to see if any of the old computer construction manuals hadn’t been destroyed. Bro had asked me to keep an eye out for one particular USB port so that he could finish constructing a new turn table of sorts. Besides, if he could mimic one of the designs, he’d be able to replicate them with more scrap metal that he could obtain quite easily. Once you give Bro a basic model, he’s usually able to replicate, but it’s touch and go sometimes.

Once the day had passed and I arrived back at the apartment, I slung my satchel across onto one of the couches before entering the dingy hole that is the place I loved to call my room. For a few minutes, I busied myself by cleaning up a little bit of dirty clothing and swords. Last time I didn’t do that I needed six stitches on the back of my hand. That teaches you real quick not to fuck around with this shit. A sharp dinging ringing from my computer brought me over to the other side of the room, wondering who would be bothering me so soon after school. Leaving the other chores to solve themselves later (read: never), I moved across the room and began to read the messages from EB.

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] started conversing with turntechGodhead [TG] \--  
EB: hey dude!   
EB: today i watched a nic cage movie and enjoyed it.   
EB: how do you like that?   
TG: dammit man after everything i taught you you do this to me  
TG: how could you break my heart like this  
TG: i thought you loved me  
TG: now who will have my children  
EB: oh shut up TG you know my love for you is platonic broship.  
TG: forever rejected   
EB: sh no more tears.  
EB: now onto more important things!   
EB: TG all four of us are gonna need to meet up soon.  
TG: no can do do broski  
TG: this birds gotta fly  
TG: free of other birds ysee  
EB: TG, now is not the time for your bullshit rapping!  
EB: in two weeks we're all going to meet up and discuss strategy.  
EB: it's a necessary risk that we need to take.   
EB: i'll talk to you later dude, consider it!   
\-- ectoBiologist [EB] ceased conversing with turntechGodhead [TG] \--

For a while, I sat in my chair, just contemplating the intelligence of visiting a person who I didn’t even know was an actual teenager, not to mention if they were even supporting me and Bro’s beliefs. Of course, Bro told me specifically that he trusted anyone who could access the network. Sadly, my trust in the unknown drunken sys-admin weren’t exactly as wholehearted and complete. 

I pushed myself away from the desk and sat there for a few minutes, silently musing. There was always this niggling in the back of my head that one day everything would fall apart, but at that time I still trusted Bro with every fibre of my being. Even with some of the fake abuse we had to pull off, I still knew that he cared about me, as aloof as he could be. When he was down and out though, that… was hard. After the odd conversation, I had the usual lust for apple juice, one of the few luxuries that we could afford on our very limited income. Looking back, I’m not sure if we were morons who deluded ourselves with images of grandeur. There’s a lot knowledge in hindsight, as said by some long executed politician, dude, something. If I’d known what Bro’s cockiness would land us in, I would have ripped into him more, pushed him into being less overt with our actions.

*~*

Later in the evening, I sat down on the couch, swiping a beer off Bro before reclining into the lounge couch. His glasses, so pointy, and shaded, obscured his expression, making the expression look less human then some of the puppets lying around the apartment. A good amount of time passed, with the two of us quietly sitting there, not saying anything, just swigging from the bottles. After a while, the silence wormed its way into my head so thoroughly that I couldn’t handle it anymore.

“Bro, what the fuck is happening with you right now, bro’s share their emotional painI let the sarcasm drip on the end of the statement, making it come across as more of stab at that narcissistic shield on his face. Pretty hypocritical coming from the other guy wearing black shades, but at least I didn’t have a poker that could put Satan himself to shame. Whenever he shut me out, I just felt this burning frustration and angst. I could almost sing songs with the amount of teenage anger that was brimming inside of my chest. This sort of situation usually led to one of two situations. One: Bro would leave without saying a word. Two: well, that’s what happened next.

“Kid, this isn’t a game. People are dying, this isn’t a joke anymore. We slip up, we die.” He dipped his glasses and I saw those amber eyes, so bright, that they almost gave the sense of burning a hole into yours. It’s the Strider genetic flaw. We’re mutants, and our eyes can’t let us forget that, not for a second, not even a breath. I lowered my own glasses in turn and let our eyes connect. Words aren’t the only way to converse, and that’s something I learnt at a very young age, one of those important life lessons that you never forget. 

I wish I’d spoken more though.

He reached over with a small crack in his composure, something like a smile, and he punched my shoulder. 

“Sorry man, I let myself get too caught up in stupid shit, let’s go find some food and watch that animation that I scabbed off that guy the other night.” The showing of emotion sent a twinge of something more than happiness through me, something that felt a lot like worry. Not often did he show this kinda overt connection, but I was so grateful that I brushed off the slight nerves and took another swig of my drink. Nothing like some illegal animation to end yet another raw day of life in the grey city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See you soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Update: Sorry this has taken so long, I decided it needed to be rewritten and it took someone kicking my ass to do it.


End file.
